Results for “anger masking hurt”

Songs

Hurt

Johnny Cash

A cover written originally as a young man's meditation on self-harm and numbness becomes, in Johnny Cash's version, an old man's…

mortality regret addiction and self-destruction

I Would Hurt a Fly

Built to Spill

A song built around an irritation so small it borders on absurd — an inaudible, nagging sound only the speaker can perceive —…

suppressed anger perception and isolation paranoia or hypersensitivity

So Hot You're Hurting My Feelings

Caroline Polachek

A breakup-adjacent pop song that treats long-distance longing as a comic, almost physical ailment — attraction itself becomes a…

long-distance desire emotional overexposure humiliation as intimacy

Corrina, Corrina

Mississippi John Hurt

This is Mississippi John Hurt's spare, fingerpicked take on the traditional blues standard "Corrina, Corrina," a song about a…

romantic longing abandonment fidelity despite rejection

good 4 u

Olivia Rodrigo

A breakup song built on sarcasm: the narrator repeats a passive-aggressive congratulation to an ex who has moved on with visible…

sarcasm as coping mechanism emotional asymmetry after breakup self-doubt about being 'too much'

Stackolee

Mississippi John Hurt

Mississippi John Hurt's version of the Stagolee legend strips the story down to its bare bones: a hat, a gun, a killing, and an…

violence and its casualness justice and law folk mythology

Candy Man

Mississippi John Hurt

A rollicking Piedmont blues built entirely on a single, transparent sexual double entendre. Mississippi John Hurt uses the…

sexual innuendo folk humor itinerant male desirability

I'll Fly Away

Mississippi John Hurt

This is less a full performance than a fragment captured on tape: Mississippi John Hurt sings the familiar gospel chorus of the…

incompleteness oral tradition humility

Will the Circle Be Unbroken

Mississippi John Hurt

This is Mississippi John Hurt's spare, guitar-picked reading of the Carter Family standard, stripping the hymn down to a single…

grief and mourning death and the afterlife family loss

Make Me a Pallet On Your Floor

Mississippi John Hurt

A traditional blues plea for shelter and intimacy that hides a tangle of romantic complications beneath its plain domestic…

itinerancy and homelessness secret or illicit love jealousy and threatened violence

It Hurts Like Hell (from Waiting to Exhale - Original Soundtrack)

Aretha Franklin

Aretha Franklin sings a ballad about love curdling into pain without dying outright, where the couple still cares but has lost…

love and suffering intertwined emotional exhaustion fear of vulnerability

Avalon Blues

Mississippi John Hurt

A homesick blues built around the tiny Mississippi hamlet of Avalon, where the singer measures the alienation of the big city…

homesickness rural vs urban life romantic longing

Coffee Blues

Mississippi John Hurt

A talking-blues that starts as an ad-jingle riff on a coffee brand and quietly turns into an extended sexual pun, with the…

desire disguised as domestic ritual double entendre longing and pursuit

You Got To Walk That Lonesome Valley

Mississippi John Hurt

This is a country-blues talking through a breakup, built almost entirely from floating verses about failed romance, rabbit…

romantic dissolution evasion and pursuit rural imagery as metaphor

Trouble I've Had All My Day

Mississippi John Hurt

A spoken introduction that sounds almost improvised gives way to a slow, circling blues built around a single refrain: trouble…

fatalism romantic betrayal poverty and legal precarity

Fool for a Pretty Face

Humble Pie

A blues-rock strut through romantic self-diagnosis: the narrator knows he's being used by a partner he can't trust, names the…

romantic self-sabotage distrust and infidelity masculine bravado masking hurt

Buddy

Willie Nelson

A heartbroken man leans on a friend to keep him from falling apart after a breakup, using the friend's company as a shield…

heartbreak male friendship as emotional support denial through distraction

Rhinestone Cowboy

Madvillain

This is a boast track built on the tension between DOOM's mythologized mask persona and the grubby realities of the rap grind.…

masked identity/anonymity the rap grind vs. glamour boasting and self-mythology

Bag Lady

Erykah Badu

Erykah Badu addresses an unnamed woman weighed down by emotional baggage from past relationships, using the extended image of a…

emotional baggage and self-protection letting go of past hurt self-worth versus accumulated pain

Mad

Solange

"Mad" is a meditation on the exhaustion of having to justify one's own anger, built around a call-and-response between a…

the right to anger versus the demand for composure respectability and emotional policing of Black people survival and trauma disguised as success

Re-Invent Your Second Wheel

Wire

A terse character study of emotional opacity, in which the narrator addresses someone who reveals nothing of themselves, urging…

emotional withholding masks and performance renewal/reinvention

Fancy Clown

Madvillain

A jealous, wounded rant against a cheating lover and her new partner, delivered as a broken phone call full of accusation, petty…

betrayal and infidelity masculine pride and possessiveness petty revenge

Thin Line Between Love and Hate

Annie Lennox

A domestic warning delivered as slow-burning soul: a woman absorbs quiet humiliation night after night until patience curdles…

repressed anger domestic betrayal the limits of patience

Joy

Lucinda Williams

A blues-rock breakup song that treats emotional loss as a stolen, physical object that can theoretically be tracked down and…

loss and reclamation anger as motion the breakup as theft

Sleep to Dream

Fiona Apple

A confrontational breakup song in which the narrator refuses to be gaslit or diminished by a partner who has treated her badly.…

self-assertion betrayal refusal of victimhood

Rehab

Amy Winehouse

A defiant, retro-soul kiss-off to the people urging the narrator into treatment, delivered with a swagger that keeps curdling…

denial and self-mythology addiction autonomy vs. paternalism

Walk On By

Dionne Warwick

A woman instructs a former lover to keep walking past her rather than stop and witness her grief, turning a request for distance…

heartbreak concealed by pride self-protection through avoidance public performance of composure

Indestructible

Robyn

A dancefloor anthem that treats romantic vulnerability as a physics problem, framing love in terms of gravity, light, and orbit.…

romantic risk self-persuasion through repetition transcendence via dance

Sometimes Always

The Jesus and Mary Chain

A duet-style breakup song built as a call-and-response argument between two wounded lovers, each trading accusations, apologies,…

pride vs. surrender cycles of hurt and forgiveness unreliable reconciliation

Asleep

The Smiths

A short, spare piece built almost entirely around a lullaby request that gradually reveals itself as a farewell to life.…

suicidal despair desire for release loneliness

If You Leave (From "Pretty In Pink" Soundtrack)

Orchestral Manoeuvres In the Dark

A synth-pop plea written for a film's climactic breakup-or-not scene, the song stages a narrator bargaining for one more night…

romantic uncertainty denial and bargaining pride masking vulnerability

Thank You Friends

Big Star

A gratitude anthem that plays like a mock-showbiz thank-you speech, thanking unnamed collaborators in language so formal it…

gratitude and its limits dependency vs. self-sufficiency showbiz artifice

The Boy With the Arab Strap

Belle and Sebastian

A loose, list-like character sketch built from overheard fragments and secondhand observation, the song circles a restless,…

restlessness and drift class and squalor vs. respectability voyeurism and gossip

Coney Island Cyclone

Mercury Rev

A slight, chant-like fragment built around a single boast of nerve, wrapped in the fuzzed-out, half-collapsed psychedelia…

adolescent bravado anxiety masked as confidence claustrophobia and escape

Funny How Time Slips Away

Al Green

A Willie Nelson standard reworked by Al Green into a slow-burning soul confrontation, where a chance meeting with an old lover…

lost love bitterness masked as pleasantry time and memory

'Til Tomorrow

Marvin Gaye

A late-night plea from a lover trying to keep a partner from leaving after what sounds like a one-night or transient encounter.…

transient intimacy romantic pleading vulnerability masked as seduction

100 Yard Dash

Raphael Saadiq

Raphael Saadiq turns a classic Motown-style running metaphor into a study of romantic panic, using the sprint as both flight and…

desire as pursuit loss of control romantic obsession

Queen Bitch

David Bowie

A voyeuristic narrator watches a street-corner seduction unfold from a hotel window, alternately mocking and envying the…

voyeurism and surveillance queer desire and rivalry gender performance and camp

Save Yourself

Sharon Van Etten

A quietly seething breakup song in which the narrator sees through a partner's self-serving reassurances and names the pattern…

emotional self-protection disillusionment in love fading intimacy

Ann

The Stooges

A slow-burning ballad of surrender, "Ann" strips The Stooges' usual noise down to a hypnotic drone so Iggy Pop can perform total…

erotic surrender loss of control obsession